


Rekindled

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Multi, Pining, Threesome - F/F/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:06:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29321370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: Even allowing for the dragon, it's been a strange sort of evening. It's about to get stranger.
Relationships: Aerin/Female Dragonborn | Dovahkiin/Mjoll the Lioness
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Rekindled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amiodara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiodara/gifts).



Even allowing for the dragon, it had been a strange sort of evening. At one point, Aerin had been certain a fight would break out: Hemming Black-Briar had been foolish enough to make some disparaging remarks – courtesy of his mother, no doubt; the man didn’t hold a single original opinion of his own – directly to Mjoll about her position as self-appointed protectress of Riften. The Dragonborn had made herself scarce, and Aerin wasn’t in the mood for a brawl – this night or any other – but thankfully he’d been able to diffuse the situation with Talen-Jei’s help, and the first chance he got, he’d escaped in search of some fresh air and a moment to gather his thoughts in something vaguely resembling peace and quiet.

The evening had turned cold enough to dull the rising stink from the canal, and even the sickly-sweet aroma from the meadery was barely perceptible in the air. He leaned on the railing, nodding to a guard who returned his hail with a hearty one of his own. Aerin, disconcerted by the experience of being one of the heroes of the hour, was just beginning to wonder if he could get away with slipping home when the door to the inn opened behind him. He glanced back, his traitorous heart leaping in case it was Mjoll, but it was only Lea, leaning against the door frame and watching him.

"You must have known it was never going to be enough for her," she said.

Aerin shot her a wary look. He never had quite been sure what to make of her. Soft-spoken, sly-eyed, she wore her dark hair cropped at chin-length, held back from her eyes by a strip of embroidered cloth. He would have found it difficult to believe she was Legion-trained if he hadn't witnessed her fighting skills at first hand when she trained with Mjoll in the yard.

There was only one thing he could be certain of and that was that he didn't trust her. He’d seen her once, back when she’d first come to Riften, talking with Brynjolf in the market square. She’d leant against the railings with her head tilted and her dark eyes fixed on the scoundrel, filled with mingled contempt and curiosity. _Impress me, then,_ that look had said. _Talk me round._ But if anyone was capable of that, Aerin was guessing, chances were it would be Brynjolf.

He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. But then again that wasn’t the point, because Mjoll _did_.

"I don't know what you mean," he said finally, taken off guard.

"Yeah, you do." She strolled forwards to lean against the railing beside him, resting her chin on her folded arms.

Aerin sighed. There didn’t seem much point in denying it now. "I thought she'd stick around a little longer, that's all. Instead she's heading straight back out again. I'm worried about her. Anything could happen out there."

"Because Riften's a safe haven where nothing bad could ever happen?"

"That isn't what I meant. I know Riften isn't safe, especially if you oppose the Black-Briars, but–"

"So it's because if something bad's going to happen you at least want to be there to see it happen."

"That's..." Aerin hesitated. "That isn't fair."

"Lots of things aren't fair," she agreed. "As it happens, I thought we'd stick around in Riften a little longer too."

"Oh?"

"Mm." She flashed him a wicked grin. "I had half a mind to enjoy the fishing."

"I'd ask you what it was you were up to but I'm not sure I want to know."

"You have something against fishing?"

"Mjoll..." He hesitated, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. "Sometimes I think she believes she's invincible. That no matter what happens she'll survive it."

"So you're just worried about her."

"I _know_ she isn't invincible. If I hadn't found her, and it was pure luck that I did find her, she'd..." He couldn't quite bring himself to say it. "She can take care of herself," he heard himself saying. "I know that, but if she leaves again, and something happens, and I'm not there to... to help her..." He stuttered over the words, feeling that old familiar ache again in his throat, and swallowed it down, cast her a smile that was more of a grimace. "Take no notice of me, too much to drink."

"Or not enough," Mjoll called out from the entrance to the inn. Of course: she always did have a way of picking her moments. "Am I interrupting?"

Aerin almost spluttered. "No! It's not– No!"

Mjoll laughed as she emerged and clapped him on the back. It was Lea’s expression that struck him as truly dangerous. By the Eight, he thought, surely he hadn’t hurt her feelings...

"You know," the Dragonborn said, "If that's really what you're worried about, there’s an easy way to fix it. Come with us."

It took Aerin a few moments to process this. "Me?"

"Why not? Don’t tell me you’d rather stay in this rats’ nest."

"I'm not a fighter," he said, while Mjoll, listening in, shook her head.

"You do yourself an injustice, Aerin," she told him, and then to Lea. "I’ve taught him how to handle a blade."

"Oh, I'll bet," Lea said wryly.

"Only enough to get by," Aerin protested, "and even then it’s only a matter of luck that I survived."

Mjoll caught hold of his hand and squeezed it. "You’re forgetting, Aerin," she said. "You fought the dragon."

Right. The damn dragon. Impossible though it seemed, he’d almost forgotten…

* * *

It had been so silent. Eerily so: he hadn’t thought something so huge could move so quietly. The first clue he had of it was the stirring of the air against his cheeks, and a sound like the sail of a boat cracking in the wind. Mjoll and Lea knew it was there before he did, lifting their heads in unison. But then, he supposed, they’d encountered dragons before. The moment he realised was a moment of terror, like an ice-cold fist had suddenly closed around his heart, and all he could think was that he had to be mistaken, until he saw it passing overhead, impossibly huge. The lights of the town reflected orange on its scaly underside as it banked, wheeling around with lazy grace.

Aerin had seen dragons before, but only ever from a distance, far enough that he could have managed to kid himself they were nothing more than tricks of the light or passing clouds. There could be no kidding himself that this terrible, monstrous thing was a trick of the light, much as he might have liked to manage it.

Oddly, it wasn’t even the dragon that transfixed him. It was them, the way their eyes were shining with excitement and exhilaration, and, most of all, how this was something they were both entirely familiar with.

Since their return he’d suspected for a while that something had changed between them, and witnessing them fight side by side, he knew for certain. It had always been there, though, in the easy manner they had with each other, or in the tales they swapped of their adventures across the dinner table, or when they bickered over the nature of thieves and honour, or when he watched them sparring in the yard, torn between jealousy and relief that for once it wasn’t him getting bashed to Oblivion and back.

Or in the way Mjoll had clapped Lea on the back after their mock-fight, her eyes alight as though a long slumbering part of her had been brought back to life. He hadn’t seen that look in her eyes in a very long time, but he saw it then, and he saw it now too, as he clutched his bow with nerveless fingers and wished to all the gods that he hadn’t.

* * *

Like a flame touched to bone-dry kindling, the dragon’s carcass burst into flames.

Aerin, winded and gasping on his knees, buried his fingers in the earth as if by so doing he could steady himself, and stared at the two women silhouetted by the light of the fire. A fierce joy came rising up in his chest, and as Mjoll came towards him with a look of concern, he raised his fist in a triumphant salute.

"We just killed a dragon, Aerin," she said as she hauled him to his feet.

"We did, didn't we," he said, a tremor in his voice. Then he drew a ragged breath. His sense, or something very like it, was starting to creep back. "We could have died. _You_ could have died."

"But we didn't." She gripped his upper arm, holding his gaze. "You did well."

"I was scared out of my wits."

She grinned, that terrible fierce smile. "I know. It's a wonderful feeling, isn't it?"

Afterwards, he never could quite be certain exactly what happened, or how, or why. On the way back to Riften, the three of them were half-drunk on their victory, with the wind rustling in the trees and the forest alight with torchbugs. Mjoll knelt by the lake to dash her face with water and Lea caught his hand.

The kiss took him by surprise. Or such was the reason he might have given for not instantly pushing her away. Or why he responded, couldn’t help but respond because his blood was up and in more ways than one. Then he saw Mjoll watching him, her eyes shining very white.

During the day, her face paint held no strangeness for him. He’d seen her applying it a hundred times or more; he was used to it, but now, he found the sight oddly eerie. As though only half of her were here with him, and the rest... well, he supposed, the other half was out there, roaming the wilderness in search of adventure.

He shook himself, casting off his foolishness. Too damned sensitive, he always had been.

And then the moment was over, and Lea was strolling off as though the kiss had never happened.

Before they reached Riften, Mjoll glanced back. The dragon had burned fast and hot, but its scorched bones were still visible at the edge of the lake. He could see their reflected embers in her eyes.

"Did you ever think you'd live to see something like that?" she asked.

"Never once in all my days," he said honestly, but it wasn’t the dragon he was looking at. Mjoll caught something of his tone, and glanced at him. It was dark, so it was impossible to tell, but if he hadn’t known her better he might have thought she’d flushed.

* * *

Lea slipped back inside the inn, leaving Aerin outside with Mjoll leaning companionably against him.

Mjoll was going to leave. He’d known, really, that once Lea returned with Grimsever that it would all be over, that for all her protestations, Riften wasn’t enough for Mjoll and it never had been. The town was lucky – _he_ was lucky – that she’d stayed as long as she had. The injuries she’d sustained in Mzinchaleft, he supposed; sometimes wounds ran deeper than expected, fault-lines through a soul rather than through flesh and bone. Some things magic and potions couldn’t heal. Time to recover, that was all she’d needed: an indirect enemy to butt against. Well, she’d got that, all right. No shortage of things in Riften for a woman like Mjoll to butt against.

When Mjoll shifted, about to pull away, he heard himself say, "Don't leave Riften."

He regretted it the moment the words were out of his mouth, but by then it was too late. The worst of it was, he didn’t even mean it, but he still couldn’t stop the words from spilling out, not once he’d started. Nor could he bring himself to look at her. "You could have been killed, Mjoll. I can’t… I mean, Riften..." He broke off, unwilling or unable to sustain the lie. Truth was, he wasn’t sure he really gave a damn about Riften. The irony was he’d have left the town a long time ago himself if it hadn’t been for Mjoll. "I don't know what Riften would do without you," he said, then stiffened when she slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together

"Riften doesn't need me, Aerin," she said. "I'm needed out there. Especially now. There's so much still to see and explore." She hesitated, weighing up her words. "You should come with us." From her tone, he wasn’t quite sure she believed it.

"I wouldn't want to intrude." He couldn't help a note of bitterness from entering his voice as images of their travels together flickered through his mind. The hot springs. Sharing a bedroll by the side of a campfire. Sheltering from snowstorms in caves. How many different places had they fucked?

She squeezed his hand. "You wouldn't be intruding. You're my oldest friend."

"And you've no idea how much I value your friendship," he said, wishing it didn’t sound so mechanical. Mjoll smiled and started to pull away. Aerin caught at her arm. "Wait, Mjoll... Back there, by the lake... What you saw... It wasn't... I mean..."

"Oh Aerin." She leaned in and pressed her lips lightly to his cheek. "Haven't you figured it out yet?"

* * *

He knew what they said about him and Mjoll in Riften. The gossips kept their mouths shut when Mjoll was around, because they weren’t idiots, but they didn’t extend the same courtesy to him.

Perhaps it had been a mistake suggesting that Mjoll live with him. Living in each other’s pockets, it struck him now, was a good way to get his heart broken. When he’d suggested Mjoll stay with him, he’d never dreamt that she’d actually take him up on the offer or that he’d be foolish enough to fall in love with her. It had been a slow process, so gradual and insidious he hadn’t even realised it was happening until it was too late, and even if he had realised, he doubted he’d have been able to do a damn thing about it.

Those fault lines, twining through him as well as her. The memories of the way he’d found her: blood bursting on the snow like crushed snow-berries, her hand clutching his, a grip once as strong as iron beginning to falter, his rising terror that the next breath she'd take would be her last. And the last embers of the fire burning in her eyes extinguished.

The house was warm, welcoming them with its familiar walls and smells, the clutter of objects, the traces Mjoll had left on his home.

He stoked up the fire as the women stripped off their sweat-dampened clothes and combed through their hair like he wasn’t even there. "It reminds me of the dragon we fought in Eastmarch," Mjoll was saying. "Afterwards we soaked in the hot springs for hours, remember? I never wanted to get out."

Lea murmured something he didn't hear. All Aerin could think was that he’d been right about those fucking hot springs.

When he returned with a pile of freshly laundered clothes, they were kissing. He froze, his gut tightening. He'd known, but that wasn’t quite the same thing as being confronted it it head on. It was a long kiss, slow and deep, Lea's hand resting on Mjoll's arm, her head tipped back, and Mjoll's fingers buried in her hair. An intruder in his own home, he felt like he'd been struck with a paralysation spell. (Later, after he'd been travelling with them for a while and he'd become more familiar with some of Lea’s more underhanded methods, he'd start to wondering if he hadn't been, after all). He couldn’t drag his gaze away, a sensation of heat and desire creeping over his skin. He was flushing, already hard, wishing he'd picked his moment better, wishing they'd picked their moment better, and godsdamnit it was his bloody house.

The breaking off of the kiss seemed to last for an age. It couldn’t last forever, he thought, and yet apparently they seemed determined to prove him wrong. Even when they did eventually break apart, Lea caught Mjoll’s lower lip between hers for a moment or two, their eyes fixed on each other.

"Sorry," he said, and their eyes turned towards him as one. Mjoll's hands still cupped Lea's cheeks."I'll, uh... give you some space." He started to turn away when Mjoll said his name.

"There’s no need, Aerin." When he looked back he found laughter in her eyes, the untrammelled joy in life he couldn't help but envy and love her for. Her face paint was smeared beyond repair, and it made her look softer, younger. There were traces of the paint on Lea’s cheeks. Lea, he realised, who was looking at him as if a more total idiot she'd never seen.

Mjoll held out her hand to him with the air of a woman making an offering at an altar of Mara. Or, he realised belatedly, of Dibella. She said his name again, softly, her lips shaping the word in a manner he’d never heard before, ending with the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth.

He took a step towards them, and then another, dumping the clothes on a table. He hesitated, then reached for her hand, startled when instead she caught his wrist in a warrior's clasp. She was grinning, an expression that was bright and wild and frankly terrifying, as she let go of Lea and embraced him instead.

It felt like being swept up in a whirlwind. She kissed him with a ferocity he wasn't quite prepared for, but that seemed a familiar refrain this evening, and his momentary caution was forgotten in an instant, swept aside by her warmth and solidity, and the culmination of a thousand guilty daydreams, so many he’d lost count.

Any guilt was quickly forgotten. He kissed her hungrily in return, clumsy in his haste with his teeth and tongue. She matched him, urgency for urgency, as his thigh slipped between her parting legs and his hands rose first to her waist, then down to ruck up the hem of her undershirt. They slid over the waistband of her braies to the skin of her lower back, feeling the planes of muscle beneath his touch, the ridges of old scars, some sustained before he ever knew her. Others he’d treated himself, and he felt a strange twisting feeling in his gut, guilt mingling with his excitement. But he’d saved her life: that had to count for something. She was moving against him, a gentle motion entirely at odds with the ferocity of the kiss, which was as savage as one between lovers long parted.

They broke off, both of them panting, foreheads pressed together. As one they laughed, breathless and startled by the force of the kiss, entirely wrapped up in each other until Lea said, a little wistfully, "Maybe it's me who should give you two some space."

Mjoll held out her hand.

Lea took it with a look he couldn't quite read, her pale cheeks flushed as Mjoll tugged her towards them. Aerin hesitated with a quick darting glance at Mjoll, then he kissed Lea, while Mjoll buried her face in his throat, kissing the skin beneath his ear, and nipping with her teeth in a way that made him groan into Lea’s mouth with want. Whose hand it was that slipped into his braies to close around his shaft, he couldn’t quite be sure. Nor could he have said whose idea it was to move towards the bed that was really too small for the three of them and which creaked rather alarmingly beneath their combined weight.

It had always seemed fated to be a strange sort of evening. He just hadn’t realised quite how strange. Still, it struck Aerin, as he did his best to kiss every one of the scars on Mjoll’s skin, that there didn’t seem much point in trying to fight it.

Kneeling on the floor between Mjoll’s legs, he pushed her thighs apart. The taste of her was sharp and keen on his tongue. Mjoll’s body twisted, her back arching so she could kiss Lea at the same time as one hand worked between the other woman’s thighs. Mjoll’s other hand knotted in his hair, pulling him harder against her, demanding _more,_ and in response Aerin pressed his fingers inside her, taking a kind of savage joy in it, the way she tasted, how wet she was, and he’d done that, he realised, arousal deepening. His other hand wrapped around his shaft, his strokes awkward, and he lifted his eyes to Lea as she came, her chest flushing as she ground her hips downwards onto Mjoll’s hand.

Then she shifted, edging across the bed. Mjoll lifted on her elbows to watch as Lea’s fingers slid down alongside his. He ceded to her, letting her fingers replace his and joined them with his tongue, running it to the webbing until she gripped his hair and jerked his head back so she could kiss him, tasting Mjoll on his lips and tongue.

"Aren't you going to fuck her?" she suggested.

Aerin rose up, nothing if not obedient, his gaze flicking from Lea to Mjoll, and then he couldn’t look away.

Later he watched them pleasure each other, slow and languid, while he stroked himself back to hardness, and then leaned back with Lea sat astride his cock. Mjoll knelt at his back, kissing his throat, while he reached back and fucked her with his fingers, thrusting them deep until he felt her muscles clench around them as he came, and it would be that sensation that drove him over the edge, until finally the three of them collapsed in a tangle of exhausted limbs, sated, for the moment at least.

He dozed for a bit, but he ached so much from the battle that he didn’t stay asleep for long. When he woke, the fire was burning down. By the sound of her breathing, Lea was asleep. Mjoll lay moulded to him, her leg hooked between his, and for a few drowsy minutes he enjoyed the feel of her pressed against him, until he realised that the rhythm of her breath wasn’t that of a woman sleeping.

He shifted, carefully, so as not to wake Lea, and as softly as he could said, "Mjoll?"

"I'm awake."

"Are you all right?"

She nodded. "It's a little strange," she said, and his expression must have changed, because she laughed softly at him and tousled his hair. "In a good way, Aerin. You were always so formal with me. I never thought you were interested."

"I didn't want to ruin our friendship," he said. Or have my heart broken, he added mentally "You mean a great deal to me, Mjoll." And there, he thought, went the understatement of the era. His voice sounded tight and priggish to his own ears and he grimaced, even while her fingers played in his hair, tugging at it lightly and sending a shivery prickle rippling over his scalp.

"I care about you too, Aerin," she said. But when he looked at her, her expression had changed, saddened, sorrowful.

"You're going with her, aren't you?" He’d known: he couldn't keep her here forever. He'd never wanted to.

"If she asks me to travel with her," she said. "I owe her a debt–"

"Grimsever?"

"It isn't just Grimsever. She reminded me of a part of myself I long thought I'd lost." She swallowed. "But Riften..."

"Riften will just have to take care of itself. It always has in the past. You're needed more out there. If anything could convince me of that, it was the dragon."

A smile spread over her face, lighting up her eyes. "Did you ever think you'd see the like?" she said, wondering. "Dragons, Aerin. Dragons."

"Some day I'll tell you about minotaurs," he said and she laughed. He hesitated, his heart pounding, then looked at her, opening his mouth to speak. He didn’t get the chance.

Her eyes widened. "You have my paint on you," she said, reaching out to rub a thumb along his cheekbone. "It suits you."

"Does it make me look like a warrior?"

"Oh Aerin..." Her hand cupped his cheek, her thumb finding his lips. He parted them and kissed the pad of her thumb. "You always were."

He shifted his head, and she leaned in for a kiss. Her hand rested on his chest, the weight of it almost enough to could keep him pinned down. In truth the bed wasn't particularly comfortable: the blankets were itchy, and Riften’s general stink of fish and the canal permeated the air, but as far as Aerin was concerned there could be no place in Skyrim more comfortable than this.

Mjoll pressed her mouth to his ear. "Come with us," she said.

Aerin thought of Mjoll: her blood bright on the snow, her hand clasped around his wrist. And of Riften, which despite their best efforts was still creeping inexorably into the mire. If there had ever been a time when Aerin had genuinely believed it might be possible to save the town from corruption, he was damned if he could remember when that was. He wasn’t sure he’d ever believed it.

"When do we leave?" he said.


End file.
